


love is blind (and also has terrible taste in food)

by Humanities_Handbag



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Blind Date, F/M, Romance, also there's a sheep stomach involved, but is getting anyway, the blind date au that no one asked for, two dorks in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6627109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Humanities_Handbag/pseuds/Humanities_Handbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.”<br/>- Jane Austen</p><p>Or: the blind date au that exactly no one asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is blind (and also has terrible taste in food)

**Author's Note:**

> Marianne needs an excuse. Bog needs a lunch. They figure it out.

“Don’t say anything and I’ll pay for whatever gross shit you’re eating!” There’s a girl sitting across from him that hadn’t been there before. Bog blinked. Blinked again. When she didn’t disappear, he took to glaring instead. 

“It’s _haggis_. An’ it isnaugh _gross_.” She lowered herself in her seat, back turned away from him. There was an unused fork on her side of the table and she picked it up. Tapped it a few times against the table top. “And _what_ are ya doin’ here?”

“I said don’t say anything,” she turned, “and I’d pay for your gross stuff.” 

She’s a pretty girl. Not quite neat and not quite anything he’s seen before. Her hair is a short, effortless mess, and her face is taken over by swaths of dark makeup and she wears a purple dress that hugs her back in a way that makes her shoulder blades look like they’re their own constellations. Her eyes are black ink. “Ya know, I did come here to be _alone_.”

“Well, sucks for you, Cockroach. You’re not alone anymore.” 

He let the nickname slide in place of a well practiced leer. “I could kick ya out. I _know_ the _manager_.” Not a total lie. He worked down the street at a small tattoo parlor and gave a discount to the man in exchange for a table once a week. A table that was small enough and in the back to ensure _silence_ and _solidarity_.

A table that was now invaded.

The girl rolled her ink eyes, picking up the drink list in front of her. “Sure you do.”

“I _do_.”

“Didn’t say I didn’t believe you, pal. I just don’t think you’ll do squat. What’s good?” The ink eyes vanished behind a swath of IPA’s. “Oh god, is everything here pink and sweet? I thought this was supposed to be a _Scottish Tavern_. Ugh. My sister would like this though.” A waiter wandered over. She ordered something stiff and strong, leaning back in the metal chair to leer at him behind a smile that was all tart. “So you didn’t.”

“Didnae _what_?”

“Rat me out. There was a guy here and you didn’t tell your buddy that I was invading your hovel.”

“It’s neigh a _hovel_. Though you’re doing a bang up job invadin’ in.” He shoved a sizable bite of sheeps stomach into his mouth. 

“Yeah, but the point is that I was right about everything so far. Gross food. Cockroach. _Me_.” Sitting farther back she smiled. It was meant as a taunt, but it didn’t do much to mask the fact that she had a nice smile. 

“Right, well, if yee’re gonna interrupt me on my lovely mid afternoon kip, might I at least ask _what_ you’re duin’?”

“You know, at this point I’m not paying for you anymore. You talk too much.”

“I’ll pay for that beer if ya tell.”

Alcohol. The universal language of truth. Her eyes slatted before those bony shoulders deflated with an easy sigh. Her constellation back bones arched. “I’m on a date. I mean- I _was_ on a date. See that blonde guy standing outside?”

He looked around her past the sea of burly men from the home country and mingling millennials trying to look at least a little more weathered in the faded wood booths. “Guy wearing the silk green jacket?”

“That’s the one.”

“He looks like a ass.”

She snorted. “He is. Anyway, I got set up on a blind date by someone. Turns out it was a ploy. Got here and that guy was standing there. Smug fucker.”

“Take it ya don’t like men in green?”

“No, I like men in green _fine_. It’s the old flame part I don’t like.”

 _Oh_. _Now_ it was becoming clearer. “So you graced my lovely table to escape Lord Douche-Hair.”

“You got it.” The waiter showed up with her drink. She saluted him with the glass, ice clinking against the side in a morose, hopeful melody, and he followed along with his fork. “To gross food and avoiding asshats.”

He barked a laugh. She smiled. He had been right. She _did_ have a nice smile.

* * *

The man outside had been named Roland, apparently. And, from what little the girl told him, Bog could at least surmise that what he’d done had been enough to leave a bitter taste in the back of her throat. 

The girl tells him stories about her pink-fruity-drink loving sister that has him laughing more than he had in a while and he tells her about his insane-man-loving mother that has her snorting until her sides split. He makes her try haggis (as penance for the company yee’ve cast my way) and the face she makes is enough to have him smiling for the next two weeks. 

Every so often she taps the table with the fork. “Ass hat status?”

“Still there.” He’d assure her, eyes flicking to Roland, who was always doing an assortment of things from checking his teeth in the reverse camera of his phone or fixing his perfect hair.

Bog would check his hair after that. It’s wiry. Everything about him is wiry. Limbs, tattoo’s, the shadow across his chin that was the result of a broken razor and too little care. 

He’s-

 _too tall, too skinny, too much_ _too…_

_…him_

and he thinks that if she can get a guy like the one outside…

His thoughts never stray far, but they do _stray_. Especially when she tells him more stories and he combats with his own. 

She despises dark chocolate and coffee and secretly loves the color yellow. He’s a grim soul that has a soft spot for small animals and art and occasionally finds ways to combine the two.

“Yee like _kickboxing_ ,” he snorted. “Ye don’t even have a partner ta spar with.”

“No one spars _girls_ ,” she grumbled. “They think we can’t hold our own.”

“I’d spar ye.”

She blinks at him, the ink eyes shuttering through long lashes, and that candy floss smile is back on her face once more. “You sure about that, Cockroach? I’m not so humble as to spare you a punch to the face.”

“It’d be an _honor_ ta be decked by such a _fierce_ hand.”

They’re nothing and everything alike.

He _loves_ it.

* * *

When his break has been over for a good hour and he’s texted his boss that he’s gonna be _terribly_ late she taps the table again.

Outside, Roland still stands guard over the prospect of what he must think to be a decent shag. Bog had been watching him. He’d stayed outside in his green silk jacket for quite a while, smiling at women that passed and winking at the men on their arms, before he’d almost got punched twice. And apparently it was after that second swing that he’d given up. The Scot watched him wander away, defeated. 

“You’re in the clear,” Bog tells her when half his haggis is gone and she’s started on her second drink. He hadn’t wanted to tell her. Hadn’t really wanted her to go. Hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted her to stay. 

But he can’t lie to her.

She pauses at the last sip of her drink. 

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

She turns. Constellations wink at him. “Well, I’ll be damned.” She points to his plate. “You done?” He nods. His appetites gone anyway.  She moves to get her wallet but he stops her.

“My treat.”

“You sure, Cockroach?”

“You never call me that again and we’ll call it even, _Fairy_.” Her nose crumples at the nickname. “Where I’m from,” he explains, digging in his pocket for his credit card, “the Fae are wee beasties that show up ta cause mischief.”

“You call me crashing your _pity meal_ , mischief?”

“Ah do indeed.” He pays for lunch and walks them out. She takes his hand when its done and gives it a good shake. Her grip is firm enough to hurt her fingers and he hopes she doesn’t let go.

She does.

“Nice meeting you cockroach.”

He doesn’t get to tell her his name before those constellations are receding into the universe of the city streets and she’s walking away from him.

* * *

It takes him two weeks to go back to that tavern. 

It’s been his to-go place for a year, but he finds he can’t stomach the thought of the atmosphere much anymore. Being alone is suddenly unnerving and cold and the idea of drinking a draft and eating a sheep’s stomach only seemed appealing when playing the part of the old recluse in the corner had been an interesting one to play. 

But he does go back. Two weeks later. The manager grunts when he moves his way through the door, ducking beneath the chiming bell. He doesn’t offer much in return. Just a nod and a quick command of, “the usual”. 

His table is empty. He sits at it. Stares at his hands.

- _wiry, ugly, long_ -

The fingers still hurt when he thinks about it too hard. Someone sets food in front of him and he rubs at his eyes through the steam. 

“Still eating gross food?”

His head snaps up.

She’s wearing a deep violet top with a high cut back that doesn’t show much skin, but when she turns to drape her jacket across the seat he can see her shoulder blade constellations still sketched through. “Do you know how hard you are to find for a guy who comes here _every week_.” She scoffs before picking up the drink menu. “Pretty damn hard.”

“I…” why is he feeling guilty about this? He shouldn’t feel guilty about this. It’d be _stupid_ for him to feel guilty about this. “I missed the last two weeks.” Oh god, he feels suddenly so guilty about this. 

She looks at him over the laminated, grease kissed paper. “Huh. No wonder I couldn’t find you.” 

“Ye… ye were _here_?”

“Uh huh. Every week.” She says it like it’s the most casual thing in the world. As if he can’t see her hands shaking. 

“For… for _me_.” Oh holy god. This wasn’t happening. This _couldn’t_ be happening. 

“No. For the drinks.” 

“Aye?”

She snorts. “No, idiot. Of course for _you_. Besides, the drinks here aren’t that good. There’s a place by me that’s got the smoothest scotch this side of the world.” She looks at him expectantly after that.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

“Are ye-”

“I’m… yeah… uh-” She tugs at her hair. The short strands gleam caramel in the dim light. “I think I might be asking you out. But to a place that doesn’t have gross food.”

“Haggis.”

“Potato, po _ta_ to.” She shrugs. “I had a good time. And… you know… I can sort of pretend like the whole _Roland_ thing didn’t happen. My friend asked how my blind date went. I told her… I told her well. _Really_ well.”

He’s wiry and too tall for doors and he eats sheep’s stomach once a week. And now he’s being asked out by girls with constellation shoulders and candy floss smiles. The place is too small for the amount of swelling his chest needs to do. 

He holds out his hand instead. “Bog.”

“What?”

“Mah name’s _Bog_.”

Understanding dawns in her eyes, and the ink flashes wet. “Marianne.” She takes his hand. Hurts his fingers. “Nice to meet you.”

She orders two drinks. He eats haggis. And when they kiss after it’s all said and done she tells him that his mouth tastes like _stomach_. 

It’s not love-

(yet)

\- but Bog drags her in for another kiss and thinks that it’s pretty damn close.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @humanityinahandbag


End file.
